mini Halloween

Happy Halloween by Argento's (mini) Suspiria!

29 seconds – my first try with the Final Cut Express:)

American Graffiti (1973)

"Well, I've gotta go.

Where are you going?

Nowhere.

Will you mind if I come along?"

George Lucas' early film is on my old debts' list. When I was a child I watched it on tv without any deeper effect on me, so this time I was curious how it will work a cult (or already a classic?) story from the early '60s which decade is more about my parents than me.

The story is simple: Curt (an amazingly sympathic character by Richard Dreyfuss) and Steve (!) finally get a chance (a scholarship) to leave their small-time hick town. They have one night to say good-bye to all their memories, loves, friends and everything what they loved and hated the place where they grew up. So the diegetic time is limited to one long night but the doubts and the changing emotions of their characters fill out easily the two hours of the film.

"Where were you in '62?"

If your younghood is from the sixties then it's a must. Otherwise it is a strong 7 out of 10: You'll love the music (the film with its continous music is actually a video clip of the age), the characters (our heroes are exactly between the small town road king and the dork "Toad"), the hair gel, the huge pimped cars, the rollerskater drive-inn waitresses, the cool radio jockeys, the high school balls and so on. A generational nostalgy on the fifties when somehow the roads were longer and wider and when The Beach Boys' shitty surfin' music didn't poison yet the real rock 'n roll...

I emphasized the word "exactly": if Lucas isn't the best director, which is undoubtedly true, he is (together with Spielberg) still one of the most talented to choose and form characters with whom the audience can identify. Offering easy identification is among the most decisive attribute in experience a story, and maybe the most important cinematic value of their movies which serves Curt Henderson's, Han Solo's, Indiana Jones', and all the characters of Tom Hanks' success. Just think on Harrison Ford's tiny part as a horny Bob Falfa - he is so "real" that you wanna watch all his movies immediately.

Finally an easter egg:

Are you a nostalgic or a competitive type?

7/10

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

"Bitter or sweet, most memories become precious as the years move on. This film is a memory – and I am grateful."

As the signature tells these lines are Mark Hellinger's words. But who is he? Good question, because Raoul Walsh didn't deal a card for him in his classic gangster masterpiece, The Roaring Twenties. Instead of taking part, Hellinger created the story, but he was more than a simple screenplay writer. He was one of the first Broadway columnists, a classic hard-drinking, hard-living theatre-journalist, with such a friends like Bugsy Siegel, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and who knows who else. He was authentic.

"In this film, the characters are composites of people I knew, and the situations are those that actually occured."

And Walsh, my favourite gangster film director (with the unbeateable White Heat, exactly ten years after this) delivers the reality what Hellinger imagined, more precisely what he lived through. In the first minutes the wheel of time counts back twenty years from 1938. We found ourselves in a not so shiny April in France. During the WWI our protagonists meet in a bombshell in the middle of a war scene. They are Lloyd the heart of oak lawyer, George the savage guy from a "saloon business" (Bogie again, again, again, and again), and there is Eddie Bartlett, a simple guy from one of the garages of New York (Cagney is perfect as usual). 1919. The war is over, and our heroes return home, to find again their dropped lifes. But when the new decade, the roaring twenties start, they have to continue their well-known game, "the struggle for survive." Unemployment, taxes on the ceiling, prohibition, regression. The almost forgotten veterans are not as welcomed as they thought (familiar?). Everybody needs to find his new role in the changed circumstances, so their lifes starts from different tracks, but in such a perfect screenplay like this we can bet that they will cross each other's paths pretty soon. More than they ever wanted...

The 'roaring twenties' is rather a phrase than a reference to this classic piece to describe the exceptionally hectic decade. There are better and worse explanation about its cultural-, economic-, crime- and politics related historical moment, but if you are tired to study those, this film is a really good choice to seize all its knowledge embedded into a flawless story (Walsh carefully builds the history in the background).

As I said only the screenplay would deserve already 10 out of 10. Cagney's play (he is THE gangster) is the cherry on the top (is it possible that he is a mixture of Robbie Williams and Malcolm McDowell?:)!

!!!SPOILER!!!

Did you realize that in the 30's films Cagney always kills Bogart?

Hellinger had right: "This film is a memory – and I am grateful." Me too!

10/10

Chinatown (1974)

"You're dumber than you think I think you are."

There are thousand definitions of being classic, but for me definitely is the case when I have time to time the feeling to rewatch the same film. Polanski's Chinatown is one of them. A true neo noir masterpiece. Why 'neo' is this noir? I could find thousand reasons, just think on its brave colours (a colorful noir? Yes!), its sexual taboos (hmm, maybe I won't spoil..), its femme fatale's human touch (which makes her story even more tragic). On the other hand it follows all the real noirs' rules with its slow ventillators, venetian blinds, complicated / layered storyline, dense cigarette smoke, sweating foreheads, heroes with accused past, soft hats and white rounded car tyres, where the sneaking in score of Jerry Goldsmith during the credits makes you goose bumps already (It would deserve a separate essay how the tone and the variations of the main theme of the music is changing along our way descending the deepest darkness of the story).

We are somewhere in the 1930's Los Angeles. Jake Gittes, a Marlow-type private eye, who changed a big part from his ancestor's cynism for some blasé attribute (I told you, it's 'neo' already, right after the fatal Vietnam war mixed with Gittes' diegetic dark secret back to his past in Chinatown...) has a new case: Mrs. Mulwray hires him to check her husband who in her opinion is having a lover. An important detail: Mr. Mulwray is a chief engineer of a huge L.A. project "Water and Power." The Alto Vallejo plan is about to solve the water problem of the city ("to keep the desert out from the streets and not on the top of them"). Simple case for the coony Gittes (he defines this extra of his as a "finesse"), he has the next days already compromitted pictures from the "couple" (even the newspaper gets them somehow...:). But the happines doesn't last too long: the next day Mrs. Mulwray is waiting for Gittis at his office with her lawyer. I mean the the never seen before, real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway).

And we are only at the very beginning of it – after some murders happen Gittes gets another assignment, even from the real Evelyn Cross Mulwray. One more character needs to be introduced namely Evelyn's father, Mulwray's business partner in planning, Noah Cross (played by unbelievable complex John Huston, exactly, the film director), who is most likely behind all the mysterious and more and more deadly actions. He gives another assignment for the getting confused but more and more motivated (and involved) Gittes. And I didn't mentioned Polanski's cameo as a "midget" with a knife. Hilariously dangerous with his childish face...

"- May I speak frankly, Mrs. Mulwray?"

- You may if you can, Mr. Gittes."

Of course I won't forget to emphasize Jack Nicholson's figure as Gittes. But I have to say if I would write here a whole litany about his greatness it wouldn't be enough to express his qualities. Some might say that this is his career's main character, which according to his Jack Torrance or McMurphy is rather a brave statement, but I'm not sure if it isn't true.

If we are really talking about a classic film historical masterwork (as we are doing), there must be thousand small stories, gossips, legends around its cultic presence. Next to those I'd like to add my small proud-detail which was mentioned among the extras of the DVD: the novel's and the film's title as Chinatown comes from a Hungarian fellow who was working there and told stories about its strange world to the writer of the original story (Robert Towne).

To make it simple all the enthusiastic gibberish above: Perfect and obligatory.

10/10

Charlie Chan's Secret (1936)

"Necessity - mother of invention.

But sometimes stepmother of deception."

You certainly love or hate Charlie Chan's figure (created by Earl Derr Biggers, played (this time) by Warner Oland), the Chinese detective, who used to tiresomely repeat these laconic sentences of dubious wisdom, who is sometimes wearing a terrible white suit, and who is using limited English with a bad, but characteristic pronunciation. Maybe in the real world I would like to hit him on his small moustached face, but actually in a movie like the whole series around his investigations he is a private eye full with individual virtue.

This time (Charlie Chan's Secret by Gordon Wiles) the film starts with a headline of a special edition of a newspaper: "S.S. Nestor lost in storm off Hawaii!" The rescue is going on already, because many prominent persons among missing. And just like it used to be, there is something "fishy" around the whole case: "A man walks out on a fortune seven years ago. Then all of a sudden, he appears from nowhere to claim it." The man's name is Allen Colby, and from the passanger list of the sunken ship he is the only one who is missing. He maybe disappeard in the deepest dephts of the ocean, but nobody could say that he died. Charlie Chan won't for sure... 

There is something common between the film professor David Bordwell and me: Charlie Chan's movies were one of our favourites during our childhood. Maybe he had luck to see them in some local movie theatre while I enjoyed some from the television. If you're regularly watching and analyzing films it isn't a surprise thet you've been amazed with these films: following Chan's methods, trying to find out his Columbo-like tricky logic, being interested in the wisely told and unfolded crime shows similarities with our everyday's interpretative methods like collecting small pieces of informations from images amd sequences, trying to look at the given narrative from different points of view, approach from parallel perspectives, build up hypotheses, summarizing existing knowledges. Actually Charlie Chan's stories contain all the values how we like and read movies.

Even if it's a bit overacted (there is a living ghost of a silent cinema in the air), even Chan's irritating character (after a while you will like him more and more) ten out of ten without a single doubt. Nothing's left but quoting the detective's most used words:

"Thank you so much."

10/10

Parents (1989)

[Finally I'm back to business. After a week holiday and some additional sickness I'm trying to be active again, so stay tuned.]

So, after a holiday let's start with an easy piece. At least I thought that Bob Balaban's cult movie is a perfect starter after a pause (the 'cult' isn't my definition: I found here among the top 25 cult films). "Comedy, drama, horror, mystery" - says the imdb, so it looked as a really good choice. Actually it was, but I won't tell you a secret if I express my disappointment: no, not about the film itself, but because I didn't get closer to the definition of a 'cult movie' again. Maybe it's my mistake (in the next months I'll go after this question really hard), forget it now for some weeks, and instead of some speculative theoretical explanations, focus on the film!

"Michael, the cellar is dark, your room is dark, everything is dark."

This time we have a normal family. Normal according to the standard way of living in the end of the fifties in some typical-terrible suburbs of the USA. An average middle aged mother with redred nails and already grandma haircut, then a fatface sweaty father with white socks and yellow cardigan (who call his son "sport":), and their son, Michael, a scared small guy, haunted with nightmares, who just doesn't fit to the narrow-shallow, idiot, I mean average 'family'. Or they are overly different? At least they have a real strange rule: eating meat all the time, for example every day for breakfast a fist-sized liver. For a weightlifter must be yummie, but for a 8-10 years old child it's even scary.

Michael's nightmares (shown surprisingly good in the film) are real? Or has he a bit more vivid imagination? The susburbs' fake Elvis-like happy-songs mixed with Angelo Badalamenti's sinister noise music plays with these double opportunities very well. At the end, you'll get all the answers - and you'll like it I promise. If you liked the Twilight Zone or the Tales of the Unexpected series, it's something for you.

What I really liked in this film is the following: At first sight it seems that everything is overacted, especially the parents' roles. All their adult gestures seems to be forced and that's why sometimes grotesque. But if you accept that the whole film is shown through Michael's child-point-of-view [the choosen picture is very common in the film], 

then sooner or later you'll realize that the whole theatrically overdone acting serves the aim to give you back those feelings what you felt when you've been a child. When all the adult things were strange, incomprehensible, and not only sometimes scary.

Balaban's movie brings back you in time when you've been afraid of the monsters under you bed and ghosts in the closet. When you could think that everybody is an alien around you who is playing a role in some terrible experiment (as a child I had this idea at least:), when The Stepford Wives were more a scary option for you than a sociologically motivated distopia.

I would say watch it, but for vegetarians I wouldn't recommend.

7/10

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

[I still don't have the definition of the cult movie, but I'm working on it...]

"I would like - if I may - to take you on a strange journey" - says some odd narrator-like criminologist holding in his hand a case-book of "The Denton Affair". Yes, the movie is about a couple, Brad and Janet (by Susan Sarandon), who left Denton to visit Dr. Everett Scott (or Dr. Everett von Scott!...) in the middle of the night on a late November evening. But a huge storm crossed their way and aims, and they had to find help in a remote castle, where the "Annual Transylvanian Convention" was held. The place is full with strange characters, but the most weird is among them their leader, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite from the transsexual Transylvania (don't ask why is the latter part of the syntagma, the reason must be some sick alliteration). Anyway, they are partying quite hard, involving the couple (for me Sarandon is the real monster with her scary huge eyes...), and creating a Frankenstein-type muscle figure called "Rocky Horror". (He isn't the scariest: my personal favorite is Riff Raff, the boss' hunchbacked servant (played by Richard O'Brian, the film's music- and screenplay writer), who's voice was later imitated by Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers series:).

Ow, I almost forgot: the film is a musical (btw you probably knew this important detail even if you haven't seen the movie - see my missing definition of the cult...). It means - what a surprise - they are singing. A lot. I mean they are communicating with each other mostly through songs. Just like you've seen in the new - mostly overestimated (by me too) - Tim Burton film. Actually it is perfect to compare these two films, ...because they are so different. The Sweeney Todd's best parts are when they are (Depp and Bonham-Carter) not singing - and Jim Sharman's RHPS's big moments are when they are. Burton's movie as a musical is a failure, Sharman's musical as a film either.

It seems I don't like the musical-films or film-musicals. But listen, here comes my real point: Have you seen Brian de Palma's Phantom of the Paradise, which was released ONE year earlier than this famous-cult (grrr) Rocky Horror PS?? If not, you should immediately! That is the movie which deserves all the appreciation and cultic status what the latter one owns. But as our heroes say: "Madness takes its toll" - it seems even in our taste and film historic honor as well.

To summarize: if you're Susan Sarandon's fan, you should watch it (let's say she isn't "overdressed") / if you want a real horror show you shouldn't (but doubtless de Palma's film) / if you like musicals you should (the music is really ok) / if you have expectations coming from its cultic fame (>†π#@!), you definitely shouldn't / in one word: this time you decide.

but at least I warned you: "Don't get hot and flustered, use a bit of mustard!" :)


5/10